The present invention relates to online travel scheduling and purchase systems and more particularly to an online vacation scheduling and purchase system purposed for employees in a bid to make them utilize the paid leaves thereof particularly for vacations.
Employee healthcare costs that are generally incurred by employers are always substantial. A recently conducted study finds that, currently, over 300 billion dollars are spent on employee healthcare costs annually, with almost half of the expenditure being spent on stress-related illnesses. One of the primary reasons for the stress-related illnesses is the continuous work an employee is willing to commit to despite having an ample provision and freedom for taking time off of it. This ‘working’ on a continuous basis causes the stress to pile on obviously leading to the stress-related injuries, which, in turn, translates into the substantial healthcare expenses. For example, a study revealed that in the United States, in the year 2009, every employee, on an average, donated three days of paid leaves back to their employer which has amounted to approximately 67 billion dollars. But in return, the employers saw a staggering increase of around 97 billion dollars in their healthcare costs. So, given these figures, it is time employers take an initiative to encourage the employees thereof to use their paid leaves in the direction of vacations especially, as vacations, generally, are best at alleviating stress. This approach not only saves employers the substantial healthcare costs, but also, among other things, improves the productivity of their employees and improves the employer-employee affinity.
An additional problem is that some industries are extremely seasonal. An example of this would be the manufacture of artificial Christmas trees. In this industry, the time period right before Christmas would be extremely busy with a corresponding need for all employees to be working. The employer would not want to schedule time off during this period. In contrast, after Christmas the demand for Christmas trees would be reduced significantly. During this period of time, the employer would want to encourage employees to schedule time off.